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Thursday, May 2, 2013

Soccer fans in the Gulf vote with their feet

Soccer is defeating efforts by wealthy, football-crazy Gulf
states to impregnate themselves against the wave of protests that have swept
the Middle East and North Africa in the past two years and sparked a brutal
civil war in Syria.

Once a prince’s uncontested playing ground that allowed royals
to curry favor, strengthen their families grip on power and ensure that the
soccer pitch did not become a platform for social and political protest, the
beautiful game is emerging as the one arena that so far has proven immune to
efforts by Gulf rulers to keep demands for change at bay.

In fact, fans are voting with their feet. Not in mass protests
as those that toppled the leaders of Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen, but by staying
away from matches. What effectively amounts to a fan boycott, is most evident
in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the one Gulf state that boasts nationals as a
majority of its citizens who in the past filled stadiums. At a recent match in
a dilapidated stadium in Doha, barely a hundred people showed up to watch.

In staying away, fans are demonstrating that stadiums in the
smaller Gulf states where local nationals account for at most some 40 percent
of the population – in the United Arab Emirates that number drops to 15 and in
Qatar to just over 20 percent – are not simply empty because of a lack of
bodies and a politically inspired refusal to attract non-nationals out of fear
that foreigners binding with a local club could open the Pandora Box of them viewing
their host country as more than just a place to earn money and leave at the end
of their contract.

Dropping stadium attendance numbers in Saudi Arabia in contrast
to the smaller Gulf states has at first glance much to do with poor performance
and decaying infrastructure as a result of lack of investment. The drop
contrasts starkly with efforts three years ago by the Saudi clergy to persuade
fans to fulfill their daily prayer rituals during World Cup matches by sending
trucks to serve as makeshift prayer rooms in front of Internet cafes where men
gathered to watch a game.

Irrespective of demography, the drop in soccer attendance is
at the bottom line proving to be more than just a question of numbers or poor performance
and infrastructure and one of an unspoken resistance to control by royal
autocrats. As a result, countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar are looking at
restructuring ownership of their premier league clubs to put an unprecedented
distance between members of the ruling elite and the game.

Qatar, which is preparing to become the first Middle Eastern
and North African state to host a World Cup, the world’s largest sporting event,
has taken the lead in restructuring the region’s soccer and building
world-class infrastructure out of both the need for massive infrastructure and
the fact that the 2022 tournament has put it in the spotlight. It’s hosting of
the World Cup when Middle Eastern and North African nations want to demonstrate
their region’s soccer prowess has also driven home the need for countries to
create the conditions for enhanced performance.

Like Saudi Arabia, Qatar is looking at transferring
ownership of clubs owned or effectively controlled by royals. In Qatar, where
officials concede that nationals no longer want to watch ‘the sheikh’s club’
play, are looking at the possibility of transferring clubs to state-owned
companies, while the kingdom where clubs are government-owned is drafting a plan
to privatize them.

Qatar, under pressure from international trade unions that are
campaigning to deprive it of its right to host the World Cup, is seeking to improve
the much criticized work and living conditions of foreign workers who
constitute a majority of the population. Its moves – adoption by the World Cup
organizing committee of a charter of workers’ rights, greater safety and
security controls and enhanced facilities – fall short of union demands for
independent trade unions and collective bargaining.

But the reforms have led to the first chip in barriers
erected to ensure that foreigners leave the country once their contracts have
been fulfilled. The Qatar Stars League last month organized the first
competition for 16 clubs founded by foreign workers and is looking at
establishing a league for foreigners that would group 32 clubs. A Qatari
sociologist has gone a step further calling on Qatari clubs to establish
branches in areas populated by foreign workers.

The Qatari moves follow a program rolled out two years ago
by Al Jazeera FC of Abu Dhabi that targeted foreigners by offering them
football as well as entertainment. The program, sweetened by a lottery prize of
one million dirham ($272,000) and a Ferrari at its final game of the season,
helped Al Jazeera quadruple match attendance to 20,000, one of the highest attendance
figures in the Gulf.

Protest against performance and royal interference has had
the most far-reaching effect in Saudi Arabia where princes are known to phone
during a match to for example order the change of a player. In an unprecedented
move in a soccer-crazy region in which rulers see political control of sports
as essential, fan pressure forced Prince Nawaf bin Feisal, the former head of
the Saudi Football Federation, to last year become the first royal to resign
from leadership of a sports association. The resignation followed Australia’s
defeat of the Saudi national team in a 2014 World Cup qualifier.

The move paved the way for a rare election in a nation that
sees free and fair elections as an inappropriate Western concept and the takeover
of the federation by a storied former goalkeeper, known to be a reformer and a
proponent of women’s soccer in a country that frowns on women’s sports. For
now, Prince Nawaf and the Saudi royal family retain their control of soccer
through the Saudi Olympic Council and the General Presidency of Youth Welfare which
the prince continues to chair.

Columnist Mohammed AlSaif, writing in the Arab News
immediately after the election said: “Words such as freedom of choice,
equality, human rights, rational thinking, democracy and elections, are terms
we came to view with high concern and suspicion. We treat them as alien ideas
that are trying to sneak within our society from the outside world. But last
week an amazing and irregular event took place, in one of our sporting
landmarks. The members of the General Assembly of the Saudi Arabian Football
Federation (SAFF) have elected through popular voting, their first president … Saudis
were witnessing for the very first time in their lives a government official
being elected through what they used to consider as a western ballot system.”

As part of the kingdom’s first five-year national sports
plan that is being drafted albeit for men only, Prince Nawaf’s youth welfare
presidency is proposing to privatize Saudi soccer clubs, use the proceeds to
improve the country’s infrastructure and restructure its league with the English
Premier League as its model. The new league would be able to increase revenues
from broadcast rights – a commercial undertaking which is still in its infancy
in the Middle East and North Africa and has so far benefitted state-owned
broadcasters like Qatar’s Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi Television that have deeper
pockets than their private sector competitors.

"We are not only trying to make money, the aim of what
we are trying to do is raise the level of sports in Saudi and in order to do so
I think you need to have healthy club financials so they can afford to bring
the best coaches, the best foreign players. And when you raise the level of
Saudi clubs, you raise the level of the national team," said Prince
Abdullah bin Mosaad bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, who heads the committee planning the
restructuring, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam
School of International Studies, director of the University of Würzburg’s
Institute of Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East
Soccer blog

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About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile